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Posts from November 2005

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Sad news: Joan Kennedy Taylor has died.

Sad news from the world of libertarianism feminism: Joan Kennedy Taylor died last week, at the age of 79, after a long battle with cancer and kidney disease. (Alina Stefanescu’s post reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post a note on the sad news; it also has a good round-up of tributes from fellow libertarians and links to a couple of Kennedy Taylor’s essays online.)

Besides her legitimate claim to being the leading female intellectual in the libertarian movement, tout court, over the past 20 years, Joan Kennedy Taylor ought to be remembered for her pioneering efforts for a renewed libertarian feminism, and (in general) for her astonishing ability to bridge cultural and political divides in order to relate to the best in people wherever she could find them (from her political work with the libertarian wing of the Goldwater Republicans, to her friendships with people ranging from Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg). Although she didn’t hesitate to confront issues head on, she didn’t believe that that head-on confrontation meant slash-and-burn political jockeying; and (as I’ve remarked before) this made her efforts towards a libertarian feminism genuinely transformative and not just oppositional — a conversation between libertarianism and feminism instead of just a shouting match. (Rather than haranguing statist feminists to be less statist, she offers a chance for anti-statists and feminists to understand each other better, and to appreciate what an unapologetic, full-bodied libertarianism and an unapologetic, full-bodied feminism, have to offer one another.

I know because that’s just what she did for me, personally. I remember reading Joan Kennedy Taylor’s essays for the first time during the summer of 1999, just after I’d graduated from high school. Her Ayn Rand and the Concept of Feminism: A Reclamation in Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand was one of a few essays that really convinced me that libertarian feminism and feminist libertarianism were viable projects. And also that libertarianism and feminism were more than just logically compatible; that they might have a lot to contribute to each other. In an important sense that essay was one of the essays that really allowed me to become an anarchist. And, strangely enough, it’s also one of the essays that really allowed me to become a more radical feminist; it opened my eyes to the possibility of an uncompromising feminism that wasn’t tethered to the half-hearted welfare liberal statism that I’d spent most of my high school years half-heartedly believing in. I have my differences with what Joan Kennedy Taylor has to say — sometimes rather sharp ones. But if it weren’t for her I might very well not be a libertarian at all, and I would be a worse feminist too.

May she rest in peace.

Further reading

Boobs against breasts

New Brunswick’s alterna-weekly, [here], recently decided that they wanted to gain some Progressive street cred on the Woman Question. Thus a cover story on breast-feeding, focusing on some women’s efforts to destigmatize it, and the need for nosy busybodies and self-appointed decency police to get over their hang-ups about women breastfeeding in public:

We don’t have a lot of support for women, says Storr. She says there are a myriad of reasons why women don’t breastfeed, but the lack of support on a few fronts is the biggest reason.

Some people will say (to breastfeeding mothers), I formula fed you, and you’re fine. Beyond this, there is a public perception that breastfeeding is something that belongs behind closed doors, she says.

In Vancouver, people breastfeeding in malls and the public is common, she says. In NB, it’s not. Christina Taylor, a 31 year old mother of two who is currently nursing a five and a half month old, says she has a friend who found some trouble in an NB mall.

She was in a food court in a mall, she says.

She had a lady tell her she should feed her baby in the bathroom. She was feeding her baby in a place where everybody else was feeding. Taylor breastfed her now three year old son, but she says at times, she felt housebound.

Here, people frown on you when you nurse in public, she says.

— Brent MacDonald, [here] 2005-10-06: Breast Asssured

A point well taken. And what better way to reinforce it than for the alterna-publishers of the alterna-weekly to pull the issue off shelves and sack the editor, Miriam Christensen, for daring to put this perfectly lovely and tender photograph on the cover:

Original cover of the 6 October 2005 issue.

… because the sight of a woman breastfeeding an infant is, apparently, inappropriate for the public sphere, and we are all of us better off for their much more appropriate replacement cover, helping to demystify breastfeeding with a pastel cartoon of a mother not breastfeeding her child. Which was apparently lifted from a 1950s Kotex ad:

Compare and contrast: the 6 October 2005 cover of [here], and a Kotex ad from 1957.

… with even the word Breast dropped out of the top headline — just to make sure, I guess — in favor of First Food, a euphemism apparently summoned from of the eighth circle of Whole Foods hell.

What else is there to do other than just to point to the damn thing — from Princess Aurora to the pastel roses floating in the air behind her? Congratulations are due to the Irving newspaper group: they have officially outpaced any possibility of satire.

Further reading

Dramatic Irony, Part II

Everything old is new again.

In the political atmosphere created by a seemingly endless, only half-declared war, in which both foreign infiltration and domestic subversion are considered serious threats by the powers that be, the spooks from the FBI have been granted expansive powers for clandestine domestic surveillance — that is to say, spying on you, and I, and our neighbors, if our political loyalties are suspect. They are accountable only to minimal oversight, by closed, secret courts whose proceedings are only known to a select few of the bureaucrats and overlords of the State–but not to you, or I, or our neighbors. And in this kind environment, the Washington Post is shocked! shocked! to discover that the FBI may have abused its undisclosed and unchecked powers:

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

…

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper unconsented physical search, according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, EPIC’s general counsel, said the new documents raise questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations and underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

We’re seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community, Sobel said. It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied.

…

Catherine Lotrionte, the presidential board’s counsel, said most of its work is classified and covered by executive privilege. The board’s investigations range from technical violations to more substantive violations of statutes or executive orders, Lotrionte said.

Most such cases involve powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the use of secret warrants, wiretaps and other methods as part of investigations of agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups. The threshold for such surveillance is lower than for traditional criminal warrants. More than 1,700 new cases were opened by the court last year, according to an administration report to Congress.

— Dan Eggen, Washington Post 2005-10-24: FBI Papers Indicate Intelligent Violations

Sometimes things just happen out of the blue, and there just aren’t any warning signs. Who could have predicted that unchecked and unaccountable spying power, responsible only to secret courts, created by bulldozing established legal limits, would lead to abuses of power? It’s not like those onerous limits on the FBI were created for any particular reason. It’s not like anything like that ever happened before.

The fact is that this is only the smallest sign of a incredibly serious problem — systematic surveillance and unaccountable secret police are always toxic, and can be lethal, to anything resembling freedom. This is something that deserves a lot more than heaping facile sarcasm on it. But what else is there to say? It’s outrageous, but it’s not at all surprising. Those who rammed through measures like the USA PATRIOT act not expecting this to come are the worst sort of fools. Those who rammed through those measures not caring whether it came or not are the worst sort of criminals. And my lingering suspicion is that most of the folks in DC are both thoughtless enough, and ruthless enough, to be best described as both.

That’s mighty white of him

(Link thanks to Charles Featherstone at the LewRockwell.com Blog 2005-11-02.)

It seems that the League of American Foxes is gathering in Argentina for a summit on hen-house protection; the caudillos of the United States and Venezuela are expected to have a bit of a row. Nevertheless, our Prince President made the following announcement to the press:

Bush OKs Nuclear Reactor for Venezuela

WASHINGTON – Despite tense relations with Venezuela, President Bush says it might be OK for the South American nation to have a nuclear reactor for peaceful energy uses.

Bush acknowledged he had not heard about Venezuela’s request for a reactor when asked about it Tuesday in an interview with Latin American reporters in advance of his five-day trip to the region. But he didn’t reject the idea, even though he has had numerous disputes with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

— Nedra Pickler, Associated Press 2005-11-02

In related news, I, Rad Geek, the Transportation Minister of this secessionist republic of one, would like to announce that it might be OK for the people of Wyoming to fly on airplanes for peaceful transportation purposes.

Also, in spite of our many differences, it’s OK by me if George W. Bush peacefully has a bowl of soup for lunch.

Goodbye to All That. Again.

(Link thanks to Mark Dilley 2005-10-28.)

Hey, look, it’s another male Leftist pissing all over other social justice movements in order to demand attention for his pet cause!

Despite the vicious resistance of employers to unionizing, organizing is not only vital to the growth of unions but is imperative to their very survival. If unions do not wish to be some oddity studied in political science textbooks, unionists must be sent to every American workplace. Sad to say, not only is the future of American unions at stake but also the viability of American progressivism. Political discourse in this nation centers on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and there is a real paucity of debate on matters that actually impact the daily lives of Americans, such as the stunning loss of manufacturing jobs.

— Ephraim Harel, The Retriever (University of Maryland Baltimore County): Labor Unions in contemporary America: Down but not out

Meanwhile, in the daily lives of half the American population:

  • Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended; half of these end in abortion.

  • In 2002, 1.29 million abortions occurred.

  • At current rates, about one in three American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45.

— Alan Guttmacher Institute: An Overview of Abortion in the United States

Now, it may very well be true that abortion has never actually impacted on Ephraim Harel’s daily life; but generalizing from his own case as a white male college student to a sweeping statement about what matters, and what doesn’t matter, to the daily lives of 260,000,000 men and women seems (even if he is doing it on behalf of his working-class brethren) more than a little arrogant, or more than a little thoughtless. Also, unfortunately, more than a little typical. I picked this quote out because I noticed it most recently, but the idea that abortion (just to take an example) is a merely cultural issue that doesn’t affect the material lives of ordinary Americans — and so ought to be played down, side-stepped, or ignored — has become all too popular in some segments of the Progressive movement. (Hello, Kos.) It might just lead you to wonder who male Progressives think of as ordinary, and what they think that culture is made of, if not of people’s daily lives. It might also leave you with the lingering impression that women’s daily lives just don’t matter very much to some male Leftists.

In point of fact, Harel’s article is atypically sensible compared to most of the rest: he, at least, has got something in mind — aggressive labor organizing — that really could have an immediate impact for the better on the daily lives of a lot of women and men; and that really does — unlike, say, the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party, or Social Security (!), or government education (!!) — really get seriously neglected in the discussion by a lot of the educated-professional Progressive Left. He’s perfectly right to call them to task for neglecting unionism; he’s perfectly right to call for large-scale, uncompromising and daring union organizing; and he’s perfectly right to bag on the union bosses of the AFL-CIO for acting as if they were running a PAC rather than an organized labor federation. (He’s wrong to suggest that the then-feared, now-accomplished split between union bosses is any kind of blow to the labor movement — solidarity comes from the bottom up; bureaucratic unity from the top down is just another corporate merger. But that’s another issue for another day.) Plenty of the things he says are worth saying, and not insisted on enough. But they are not worth insisting on at the expense of women’s struggle for control over their own bodies and their own lives. It’s long past time we said goodbye to all that.

It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white women–with men relating to that as best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant, or titillating …

— Robin Morgan (1970), Goodbye to All That ¶ 4

You can let Mr. Harel know what you think at ehare1@umbc.edu.

Further reading

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